This would be a massive science integrity scandal under a R administration
Sitting White House official edits a paper for PNAS
Paper is used by that official to advocate policy b4 Congress
Paper later retracted due to errors & COI (was written by her mates & bro in law)
Six months after publication of the flawed paper by her mates & bro-in-law & 4 months after testifying before Congress using the paper to advocate for Biden Admin priorities Lubchenco joins the Biden administration
Just imagine if this was instead Scott Atlas & a retracted paper
Side note:
Sala et al. state that they rely on IPCC SRES A2, which would have been odd
They don't, they actually rely on ... RCP8.5
This is one of the most cited and covered-by-media articles of 2021
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This is a really important number & I haven't seen it mentioned anywhere
FEMA estimates that in 2021 we should expect $141B is catastrophe losses in the US, based on current exposure, historical event frequency & loss ratios
The FEMA loss estimation CANNOT be compared to the spectacularly awful NOAA billion dollar losses
For weather losses, FEMA uses data processed by ASU/SHELDUS off of NOAA Storm Data, as below
NOAA Storm Data uses a bespoke special sauce to gin up losses (read on...)
NOAA's billion $ loss database mixes together direct and indirect losses (like business interruption & commodity markets) as well as non-event costs (e.g., "disaster restoration and wildfire restoration")
They also "scale up" insured loss data, which guarantees double counting
2021 focus of attention in climate research
via Google Scholar
1⃣RCP8.5 OR "RCP 8.5"= 5,850
2⃣"natural variability" AND climate= 4,510
3⃣RCP4.5 OR "RCP 4.5"= 4,460
4⃣RCP2.6 OR "RCP 2.6"= 3,120
5⃣RCP6.0 OR "RCP 6.0"= 1,540
More studies of a fiction than of "natural variability"
Lessons:
In 2021 RCPs continue to dominate the literature (= ~8x more studies) despite SSPs available & implausible scenarios lead both RCP & SSP studies